Evelio Javier and Ninoy Aquino

A Nation of Warriors

Indeed when we look back, we were not lacking in Filipino leaders with great courage,
with high intellect, with indomitable vision.
Ninoy Aquino was one. Even as a young boy in Concepcion, Tarlac, his concept of the
dominating trait of leadership was knowledge. He said, as only an irrepressible Ninoy could say,
that while his facial features resembled that of Sergio Osmeña, his brains were those of Manuel
Quezon. It was much later on, as a young politician in Tarlac, that he opened up his chest to bare
his guts. He took on Ferdinand Marcos who preposterously branded Ninoy as a communist. And
there the battle was joined.
Not all the riches, not all the power that the dictator offered the young Aquiino could
dissuade him from his chosen path. His was a cry wrung from the early freedom fighters of
America: "Give me liberty, or give me death!"And so Ninoy died from a soldier’s bullet with the
blessings of Malacañang and the military. The nation grieved. But its hero was already dead. Till
today, the military has the stain of Ninoy’s blood on its hands.
There were others.
There was Jose (Pepe) Diokno who like Ninoy would have made a great president but
who like Ninoy disdained power and riches. There was Evelio Javier, governor of Antique, every
inch of him a potential great leader, who fought greed, graft, entrenched power. The powers that
be decided Evelio Javier had to go, and mercilessly drilled his body lifeless with a hail of bullets.
There was too Cesar Climaco, the white-bearded one who once ruled Customs, who defied
Ferdinand Marcos. He slumped dead from a motorcycle, if memory serves me right, as the
Palace’s hired assassins finished him off in broad daylight. Climaco had a gift for satire, the bon
mot, the naughty, bandoliered sally.

The Impossible Dream

Evelio, like Ninoy Aquino, represented enlightened politics at the time when everything in
the country revolved around the Marcos dictatorship. Against guns, goons and gold, Evelio, had
an army of young people as his campaign volunteers. He would take the banca in visiting the
province’s coastal towns. He was a Jesus-like figure as he waded to the shore to his adoring
supporters.
As governor, he made Antiquenos, many of whom had developed inferiority complex
because of the province’s reputation as land of the sacadas, rediscover their proud heritage by
initiating the “Binirayan” festival.
Evelio eventually won his election protest after the 1986 People Power revolution. But it
was too late. On Feb. 11, 1986, Evelio was gunned down in front of the provincial capitol while he
was overseeing the canvassing of votes in the snap polls between Cory Aquino and Marcos.
Again, Arturo Pacificador, who was a Marcos loyalist, was the suspect, but he was later acquitted.

Death of his body, but not his soul and legacy

The place was Antique New Capitol Building, in the capital town of San Jose de
Buenavista, in the nearby park. In the fateful day of February 11, 1986, Tuesday, few minutes
past the hour of 10 a.m., three hooded armed men alighted from a Nissan Patrol Jeep and
immediately open-fired at Evelio, who was then talking with some friends.

Seeing his inevitable death coming, Evelio, a natural hero, evaded what could have been
a resultant death for his friends when after shouting at said friends to dock for cover, scampered
around to drive the mercenaries away from his friends. He sustained gunshot wounds on his left
shoulder and leg in the initial gunshots. Bleeding profusely, he scampered for safety by
zigzagging the 50-meter stretch across the circular park away from the Capitol building and in the
process collapsed in an artificial moat. With his strength almost ebbed, he somehow managed to
clamber up amid the hail of whizzing bullets from his pursuers.

He sought for safety in a comfort room owned by a certain Leon Pe where he was
cornered by his chasing attackers. Showing no mercy except brutality, the killers riddled his body
and head with simultaneous volley of fires notwithstanding the pleadings of their dying victim.

As the prostrated corpse of Javier lied on the damp cement of the comfort booth, another
gunman, hankering for a kill, unmasked himself and made a shrill outcry - "Can you recognize
me? Stand up and fight!"

Whereupon, he fired the coup de grace directed at the head which ended the once
brilliant career of EBJ whose obsession was to make his people enjoy the atmosphere of peace,
justice, freedom and democracy and to achieve what he had revealed that he sustained 24 bullet
wounds which pierced through the different part of his body. (Antique Monitor, 1987)

Evelio may have died, but his dreams for his people lived on. Thousands of weeping
Antiqueños followed him to his final resting ground to the tune of his favorite theme song
"Impossible Dream". Hundreds still tied yellow ribbons along the streets to the cemetery. Filled
with mixed feelings of sorrow and anger, Antiqueños paid their last respect to the person who had
captured their dreams and aspirations.

Javier is dead, but his ideas did not die with him, neither were they buried with him. His
thoughts and ideas are still alive, and will forever linger in every Antiqueños heart.

His death contributed to the groundswell of protests leading to the Edsa I uprising on
Feb. 22-25, 1986, which toppled the Marcos dictatorship.
Evelio espoused principled politics and transparent leadership and stood against the
politics of “gun, goons and gold.”
He refused to be accompanied by armed escorts even when threats to his life
heightened.
His advocacy for good governance is best remembered in one of his speeches where he
said: “Ang pwesto sa gobyerno bukut burugasan, bukut paranubli-un (Public office is not a means
of livelihood or is inherited).”
The former governor, a prominent opposition leader during the Marcos regime, is
considered one of the icons of democracy and freedom. He was gunned down in broad daylight
on Feb. 11, 1986, by heavily armed men at the public plaza during the canvassing of votes of the
snap presidential elections.

Sources:
The Philippine Star
Philippine Daily Inquirer